


God Above, Us Below the Silver Sky

by greygerbil



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Brief Mentions of Past Sexual Abuse, Developing Relationship, Internalised Homophobia, M/M, Pre-Canon, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:15:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28114497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: After his first night with Sean, Geoffrey is not sure where to go from here.
Relationships: Sean Hampton/Geoffrey McCullum
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18
Collections: Writing Rainbow Silver





	God Above, Us Below the Silver Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoreyG](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/gifts).



Geoffrey opened his eyes, looking at a wall that didn’t belong to his bedroom – old grey brick, rusty pipes, could be anywhere in this godforsaken town – and grabbed his crossbow. It still laid next to him by the side of the mattress, hidden under his coat, the spot where he would always put it no matter where he slept. Good sign.

“Good morning.”

Weapon in hand, Geoffrey sat, looking at Sean. He was perched on a rickety wooden chair at a table covered in scattered paperwork, pencil in hand, and smiled despite the crossbow being angled just right to nail his upper body to the wall with one movement of Geoffrey’s hand. Geoffrey quickly let the weapon drop.

“Morning,” he said. “How the hell did you get up without waking me?”

If he’d been a deep sleeper, Geoffrey would already be dead, considering his line of work.

“I learned to move quietly so I don’t startle my sleeping guests.”

The idea that someone could wind out of his arms, get dressed and start working across the room without him noticing should have the hair on the back of Geoffrey’s neck standing, but Sean make him suspicious anymore – dangerous, that was, as a rule. Still, after seven, eight months hitting this place every night he had any spare time, he was pretty sure he knew the Sad Saint well enough to say he wouldn’t stab him in his sleep.

He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and started looking for his underwear, having trouble to keep his gaze on Sean’s friendly smile. Staying the night, or day in this case, was not ever how he did this kind of thing, but in truth he hadn’t really ever done what they had done at all. They hadn’t just fucked, though the fucking had been amazing, there’d been kissing and Sean muttering gentle words and Geoffrey not throwing them back in his face. In the end, he’d dozed off here because he hadn’t had the heart to disturb Sean after he fell asleep with his head on Geoffrey’s shoulder. That memory accounted for the queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, especially glancing at Sean’s make-shift shrine at the other end of the room, where one door was half-opened, allowing Geoffrey to see a picture of Mary and a cheap bronze cross.

 _If the sin is deeply rooted within you by nature itself, it always catches up with you_ , he heard Carl’s voice echoing in his head. He’d been speaking about leeches trying to abstain from human blood, but growing up by Carl’s side with the holy crosses the Priwen guards lifted as weapons around him, learning to think of churches as fortresses, how could Geoffrey not have seen it was true about the sin that God knew was within him, too?

After a life of only fucking men whose names he wouldn’t remember in the morning, figuring he could stave off the urges like that, he’d truly succumbed. He’d made himself believe that he was only striking up a friendship with Sean and lying to himself hadn’t been difficult, since their sweet-talking and touching had never been forward enough to be unambiguous. They could have moved faster if Sean had been pushier, but Sean was the kind of bloke who didn’t even know how to spell pushy. That’s what had made this different, though. If Geoffrey could have bent him over the table the first week, perhaps he could have just gotten it out of his system and moved on. Sean hadn’t allowed it to be so easy. Geoffrey should have known where it was going five months ago and deep inside he had, but last night had stripped him of his ability to deny it.

“Is everything alright, Geoffrey?” Sean asked.

“I don’t know. You tell me,” he said, rising to his feet. He was naked but for the underwear he’d kicked into, defenceless in that, but he still towered over Sean’s slight figure where he sat in his chair. Reaching out, he grabbed the cross that hung from the rosary around his neck. “You think He’s happy with us right now?”

He didn’t know why he was scowling at Sean like it was his fault, didn’t really like himself for it.

“God?” Sean asked softly. It seemed that he was as sure that Geoffrey wouldn’t hurt him as Geoffrey was that Sean was no danger to him. Sean had an unnerving tendency to stare all manner of trouble straight in the eye. “I don’t see why He wouldn’t be.”

Geoffrey’s brows shot up. Sean couldn’t get through five minutes of conversation without throwing God or a bible verse in there somewhere, but this did not bother him?

“You’re going to pretend you don’t know what I mean?”

“Lust is a sin,” Sean admitted, “and I will pray that we will be forgiven. Yet I think what is between us is more than that, don’t you?”

Geoffrey let go off the pendant as if it had burned him. He wanted to say no, but it felt pointless after he’d grinned like a fool when Sean had told him he loved him last night while stroking Geoffrey’s hair, with Geoffrey’s cock between his legs.

“You say that like it doesn’t make it worse.”

“But between people who are married, for example, lust is allowed. If two people think they belong to each other in soul, they are allowed to belong to each other in body.”

“If a man and a woman do,” Geoffrey reminded him glumly.

He sat down on an old chair that creaked under his weight. The fact that Sean wasn’t freaking out, prostrating himself before his shrine and telling Geoffrey that they had to atone calmed him. In the end, for all that God had been his shield in a very literal sense, Sean seemed like the man who had the real connection.

Sean set his pencil aside. “Yes, that’s true. The church has made it impossible for us to do what is supposed to be the proper thing. I can’t marry you, so that means according to the church’s rules there is no sacred way for us to sleep together.” He raised his gaze briefly, not to the soot-stained ceiling, Geoffrey didn’t think, but to someplace much higher. “Yet, I don’t think this can be right, that the devil deals in love like this.” He shook his head. “It is arrogant of me to say I know better than the church, but, just like the people who wrote the bible, they are still humans and not God, and the full plan does not reveal itself to us mortals.”

“How do you know you’re right, then?”

“I don’t and that worries me. I am only human, too. I don’t want to displease Him.” He shook his head. “However, I think if the sin is that I love someone who has no qualms with my attention, then I am willing to stand trial for it, and I think the Lord is merciful on such crimes.”

“Think you and I have different ideas of God,” Geoffrey murmured.

“Yes, perhaps,” Sean said gently.

Geoffrey was eternally grateful to Carl Eldritch, but he hadn’t been a soft man and the God Geoffrey had known from him had not forgiven, but punished, with an iron fist that would crush anyone not living by His orders. Geoffrey had told Sean way more about his childhood and the Guard than he should have and the man was clever enough to put two and two together here and figure out where Geoffrey’s view on the divine came from.

“I wish I could take your concerns from you, but I cannot. I can only say that the kind of lust that I’m certain is a sin was forced on me once and it was very different.”

Geoffrey went quiet for a moment. Sean had never directly addressed this part of his past. He’d known Geoffrey was aware of it because Geoffrey hadn’t made a secret about asking around in the district way back when they’d first met. He’d still been trying to intimidate Sean, then, had figured no one could really be this nice without some corpses in the basement, hoping to gain some leverage to get the saint talking; but even he hadn’t been enough of a bastard to press Sean’s nose back in that mess with the priest.

“I see,” he said carefully.

“I was a little worried,” Sean admitted, the certainty in his voice faltering, yet the smile remained, “that it would feel the same. I hadn’t been with anyone since then. It was like a clear day against a cloud-covered night, though.”

“Wait,” Geoffrey said, successfully somewhat distracted from his turmoil. “I was your first? Why didn’t you say anything?”

Sean had seemed experienced – or perhaps confident was the better word because going over it in his head, Geoffrey did remember clumsy touches, confused hesitation. They had been drowned out by the welcoming way Sean had closed him in his arms, though, and Geoffrey hadn’t been in the mood to pick at details while having one of the best lays of his life.

Sean smiled awkwardly.

“I couldn’t figure out a way to bring it up without mentioning my past, too, and I didn’t want to think about that in the moment. Besides, I didn’t need to,” Sean added. “You didn’t seem to expect anything from me but that I wanted you, and I always feel protected by your side, so once we started I stopped being nervous.”

If Geoffrey wanted to wrestle free of Sean’s hold on him, this was probably not the way, considering how his heart swelled.

“Right. If it’s fine for you.” He rubbed his forehead with his knuckles. “You know, I can almost see it for you. Waited God knows how long for someone you were really sweet on, only gave it away when we’d known each other twice as long as most people court.” He shook his head. “Me, though? I’m a sinner, would be even if I got with women. I’ve fucked men for a night or two and then pushed them away, and enough of them that I couldn’t tell you who they were even if I wanted to remember.”

“But they were willing men?”

“Of course,” Geoffrey bit out, though not quite as offended as he could have been because Sean had asked the question like it had a foregone conclusion.

“Then I still think it was not malicious, though you might do well to pray _a little_.”

The playful tone made Geoffrey smile against his will.

“I really hope God is as forgiving as you,” he said, “but that’s a tall order for Him.”

Sean huffed. “No,” he said. “The Lord is an example to us all in that.” He hesitated. “What happens now, though? Do you wish to leave?”

“No,” Geoffrey said because as terrifying as it was, he saw no other option but honesty. Not because he didn’t still worry that hellfire was already licking at his feet, but because looking Sean in the eyes now, he knew he was not strong enough to leave and not come running back with his tail between his legs eventually. He’d spare them both that indignity.

“I’m glad. Even if we will just be friends now -”

“I don’t want to go back to being friends.” Geoffrey reached out to cup Sean’s cheek with his hand, feeling his beard rough against his palm. “This is not going away if I pretend I don’t want to be your man.”

Sean brightened in a way his muted, mild expressions rarely allowed. Looked pretty on him.

“I want you to be,” he said.

“Yeah.” Geoffrey’s heart was liable to break his ribs at this rate, thumping so hard. He tried for a grin, something to hide how deeply he really felt. “All I can offer, I’m afraid. If you were a Siobhán, I’d propose. Make it right and all that. Maybe I will for the hell of it.”

Sean leaned in and kissed him, his arms tight around Geoffrey’s neck, leaning his forehead against his when they broke apart.

Before either of them had more words, there was a knock at the door. With an apologetic look, Sean moved out of Geoffrey’s embrace.

“I’ll be there in a moment!” he called, before looking to Geoffrey and lowering his voice again. “I’m afraid I’m needed outside. I should start supper, too.”

“I should head out as well. Got recruits to whip into shape.” Geoffrey frowned. “Be careful. I feel like your job is worse than mine these nights.”

That wasn’t to say he had nothing to do because the leeches were particularly rabid lately. Still, though Geoffrey hadn’t fought in the war, good enough at disappearing through the cracks of society that no one had ever asked him to, his life had been a war and he knew the scars that left. Some men didn’t come back right and that could be dangerous for those trying to take care of them now that they poured into London. Sean was on the frontlines for that, talking to everyone who had no one else. That wasn’t even to speak of the illness that was rolling over the city like a wave. He’d helped Sean put up tents in the front yard to keep the sick away from the healthy and those were already filling up.

Sean stood, brushing his hand against Geoffrey’s.

“The Lord protect us both. We’ll talk more tomorrow, yes?”

“Yeah. Then maybe close the door again, too,” Geoffrey said brashly before he could lose his nerve, showing a toothy grin.

Sean smiled, his cheeks growing pink. Blushing looked good on him and Geoffrey realised he liked talking like this. All he’d ever done before was tell men in the shortest words he could muster what he planned to do with them. Yet, he’d always wanted more than that, and he sure as fuck wanted more than that for Sean. If he could be the man that the Sad Saint deserved, then maybe God would have mercy on him, too.


End file.
